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Anita Traverso feels that by providing artists with an avenue outside the gallery scene she is creating an atmosphere of no-compromise for their art.Photo: Dominc O'Brien

Anita Traverso provides a link between buyers and
a range of artists. Her service is an alternative to
the gallery scene, writes Louise Bellamy.

It might not be a law of nature but it's a law nonetheless: the
50 different shades of white we're painting our home and office
walls require at least one mandatory work of art. But buying art is
even more problematic than choosing the "right" white, and while
the desire and money may be there, the time and knowledge is sadly
lacking.

Some say the art industry only has itself to blame. Art
galleries have been compared to mortuaries - they're so dead and
silent - and despite their obvious glitz, art auctions can be as
alienating as a foreign film without subtitles.

It's the general reticence to embrace the challenge that the art
market presents that has prompted former gallery owner Anita
Traverso, 46, to start doing the legwork. For the past four years
she's been working around the clock from her home-based office in
East St Kilda advising an 800-strong buyer base about painting,
sculpture, ceramics and craft.

Her credentials, she admits, are basic - "just years in the
business". A former drama graduate with a passion for visual arts,
Ms Traverso embarked on a number of careers from retail through to
accounts until 1989 when she opened Artefact, a gallery that
exhibited high-quality craft in Chapel Street, South Yarra, which
was forced to close when the Jam Factory was built. She used the
client base she had established at the gallery "because at that
stage Chapel Street attracted a huge international clientele" and
started exporting to Asia, later the US, and then opened a smaller
gallery in the George Building, St Kilda.

Increasingly she found the space did not match the work and in
2001 sold the gallery and started the consultancy. Armed with a
thick portfolio of work by more than 30 artists, including painter
Katherine Boland, sculptor Viktor Kalinowski and award-winning gold
and silversmiths, Marcus Foley and Dore Stockhausen, Ms Traverso
negotiates sales and commissions for clients ranging from big-name
hotels and corporations to private clients wanting to start or
change collections. Like many commercial galleries, she takes a 40
per cent cut on sales and commissions but unlike the galleries, she
does not take a further slice of profits from work her artists sell
independently of her. "The artists I work with deliberately choose
not to be with galleries, they don't like the feeling of being
stifled and getting one show at a gallery every 18 months isn't
financially sustainable unless you're one of the few truly
established artists," Ms Traverso says.

What distinguishes her most from all gallery owners is that her
only overhead is time. Because the artists she manages are not
wedded to a particular gallery space and because she is not wedded
to the onerous hours promoting, lighting and manning shows, Ms
Traverso spends most of her time selling and commissioning new work
as well as tendering for large private and public projects. She is
also in regular contact with architects and interior designers "who
know that their job needs to incorporate art but have neither the
time or the knowledge to access it".

Ms Traverso also organises a handful of shows each year, leasing
appropriate spaces for one-off shows. Next week she has a booth at
the Melbourne Affordable Art Show with works by Boland, Dinah
Wakefield and Tim Skinner for sale. Later this year she's showing
photographer Jenny Bolis and painter Michelangelo Russo but has not
found spaces for them yet.

Wakefield, 50, who has been a full-time painter for 15 years and
whose works sell for between $3000 to $4000, describes herself as
"up-and-coming" and survives as an artist "because I sell my work
through art consultants".

Working with Ms Traverso in Melbourne and Surrey Webb in Sydney,
Wakefield says, "my consultants constantly approach people with my
work, which is important, because until you reach a level where
you're well-known and sought after, exhibiting in a gallery only
gives you the limelight for a short time and before you know it
you're in the stockroom waiting for someone to come along and
inquire about you".

Boland, 47, who previously exhibited with Ms Traverso in the
George Building, is a step ahead of Wakefield on the career trail.
With her distinctive abstract landscapes in which she torches,
burns, chisels and gouges enamel onto plywood attracting $6500-plus
figures, she now wants a relationship with a gallery "because my
work needs a home".

Having been attached to Soho Galleries, Sydney, for five years,
she now lives in Melbourne and thinks "the alignment to a
commercial gallery is important and I'm getting sick of jumping
around".

But Ms Traverso is enjoying the exposure her artists are
attracting. Recently she secured work at Melbourne's Crown Casino
for five artists - ceramicist Jill Symes, sculptor Alice Nixon,
glass artists Lorry Wedding-Marchioro and Rachel Merritt and
painter Daryl Turner. More recently Boland, tapestry weaver Gerda
van Hamond, painter Julie Manning and Kalinowski were commissioned
to do work for Conrad Jupiters Hotel on the Gold Coast.

While purists would argue hotels and casinos are hardly sanctums
for the appreciation of art, painter Daryl Turner says, "there's
always an advantage in a one-off sale or commission".

Turner, who is a graphic designer, says the demands of galleries
can be too great. "Galleries can ring up, say you're booked for
June and that they want 20 paintings pronto. You might be only able
to produce 10 good pieces in that time."

The president of the Australian Commercial Galleries
Association, Stuart Purves, who owns Australian Galleries, has no
problem with art being promoted and sold outside galleries.
"Anything that gets art into the public eye is a good thing," he
says.

Mr Purves, who has 60 artists on his books and mails 3000
letters a week to clients about shows at his galleries in Melbourne
and Sydney, says galleries give artists "reasonable security that
they'll have a show every couple of years". The other advantage of
a gallery is that it has a fixed address.

Leading Melbourne sculptor Neil Taylor, 59, who has shown
biannually with Niagara Galleries, Richmond, for 15 years, has
found selling through a gallery satisfactory, though he admits that
it's only been in the past six years since retiring from a teaching
position that he's been able to concentrate on art full-time. "I
need the gallery, I couldn't sell or promote my work on my own. I
like the gallery doing everything."

Painter Graeme Drendel, 50, who has shown at Australian
Galleries for 10 years, says it's only now, with his paintings
fetching $10,000 to $20,000, that he's managing "a sustainable
annual income of around $50,000 from exhibiting at a gallery".

Until four years ago he, too, supplemented his income by
teaching.

What will continue to keep Ms Traverso from running another
gallery is simple. "If I can focus on getting artists' work sold
and commissioned then I'm providing them with an opportunity of no
compromise - of producing brave and buoyant art."